Alternatives
Best cheaper alternatives to Sonar
Looking for a cheaper or smarter replacement for Sonar by Perplexity? We compared every LLM model with verifiable pricing on real input/output cost, context window, intelligence and modalities. 18 options are meaningfully cheaper.
Category: LLM 127K context
Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B93% CHEAPER
Google
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.0375 in · $0.15 out / 1M Tokens 36 1.0M ctx 98%
Qwen3.5 9B89% CHEAPER
Together AI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.1 in · $0.15 out / 1M Tokens 262K ctx 98%
Gemini 1.5 Flash87% CHEAPER
Google
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.075 in · $0.3 out / 1M Tokens 48 1.0M ctx 98%
Gemini 2.0 Flash83% CHEAPER
Google
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.1 in · $0.4 out / 1M Tokens 56 1.0M ctx 80%
Ministral 3 3B90% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
More modalitiesSame category
$0.1 in · $0.1 out / 1M Tokens 128K ctx 98%
Llama 3.2 11B Vision95% CHEAPER
Meta
More modalitiesSame category
$0.055 in · $0.055 out / 1M Tokens 38 128K ctx 85%
Ministral 3 8B85% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
More modalitiesSame category
$0.15 in · $0.15 out / 1M Tokens 37 128K ctx 98%
Mistral Small 485% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
More modalitiesSame category
$0.1 in · $0.3 out / 1M Tokens 128K ctx 78%
GPT-5 Mini69% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25 out / 1M Tokens 400K ctx 82%
o369% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25 out / 1M Tokens 78 200K ctx 82%
GPT-5.269% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25 out / 1M Tokens 400K ctx 82%
GPT 4.1 Mini69% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25512 out / 1M Tokens 53 1.0M ctx 82%
GPT 4.1 Nano69% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25512 out / 1M Tokens 41 1.0M ctx 82%
o4 Mini69% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25512 out / 1M Tokens 70 200K ctx 82%
Llama 3.1 8B Instant 128k94% CHEAPER
Groq
Same category
$0.05 in · $0.08 out / 1M Tokens 128K ctx 98%
Jamba Mini75% CHEAPER
AI21 Labs
Larger contextSame category
$0.2 in · $0.4 out / 1M Tokens 256K ctx 98%
Llama 3.1 8B95% CHEAPER
Meta
Same category
$0.055 in · $0.055 out / 1M Tokens 34 128K ctx 85%
Imagen 496% CHEAPER
Google
Same category
$0.04 in · $0.04 out / image 80%
Costs are normalised to a blended 1M-token workload (or per-unit price for non-token models) using each model's latest verified pricing. Models with pricing under review are excluded from recommendations.